GTX 770 paired with an AMD Phenom II 955 Advice

[Tindo]

Please help. I have finally saved enough to upgrade my GTX 570 to a GTX 770, at the moment I have a Phenom II 955 clocked at 3.8Ghz, my question is will there be a CPU bottleneck or not, should I just wait till I got enough money for a z87 board and processor as well? Many thanks

 

[NeverBackDown]

CPU bottleneck? No i don't think so. Will your cpu be maxed out? Yes. Will you have lower minimum frame rates? Yes. Other than that not really. I would opt for a better cpu and then focus on graphics. Your 570 is not exactly slow.

 

[Tindo]

CPU bottleneck? No i don't think so. Will your cpu be maxed out? Yes. Will you have lower minimum frame rates? Yes. Other than that not really. I would opt for a better cpu and then focus on graphics. Your 570 is not exactly slow.

Thanks for the quick reply, I am gonna use the money for GTX 770 to get a 4670k and a good Motherboard, do you think it might even improve minimum FPS on my GTX 570 while I save up for a GTX 770

 

[NeverBackDown]

Yes, how much i don't know but overall minimums should increase quite a bit leaving you a higher avg. Maxs won't go up so much but that's really the least of your worries. If you play FPS minimum is what you want to worry about the most.

What motherboard will you be using?

 

[DragonFire]

Your CPU is good enough that you should still get a significant improvement from upgrading the GPU. Most games run flawlessly on an overclocked Phenom II, but as NeverBackDown said, a few will have lower minimum framerates that won't be improved with a GPU upgrade. What is your CPU/NB frequency?

 

[Tindo]

Yes, how much i don't know but overall minimums should increase quite a bit leaving you a higher avg. Maxs won't go up so much but that's really the least of your worries. If you play FPS minimum is what you want to worry about the most.

What motherboard will you be using?

Yes FPS is me, will be using Asus z87-pro, sorry for late reply

Your CPU is good enough that you should still get a significant improvement from upgrading the GPU. Most games run flawlessly on an overclocked Phenom II, but as NeverBackDown said, a few will have lower minimum framerates that won't be improved with a GPU upgrade. What is your CPU/NB frequency?

Never changed the northbridge frequency, its on default, will have a look in the bios and get back to you, sorry for late reply

 

[Kei]

Definitely upgrade the GPU first. More often than not, a faster cpu will improve the framerate a bit, but a faster gpu will improve the framerate a lot. I've also got a 955 which i've had running at 3.75GHz for the last 4 years and i'm still not feeling the need to upgrade it but i'm feeling the need to upgrade my 6970 already. (which by all accounts is pretty much identical in performance to your 570) The only games i find running slow on my system are graphically heavy like crysis 2/3, which need to be run at very high as ultra/extreme is too much for the gpu. (like tressFX on tomb raider or ultra ambient occlusion on bioshock ultimate)

Overclocking the CPU NB is a wise move. Mine is running at 2662MHz. IIRC the voltage is at 1.25V for the CPU NB and 1.45V for the cpu. (older C2 stepping, needs plenty of juice) I have had it up at 2.9GHz with 1.425V and the cpu just over 4GHz with 1.55V but that just puts unnecessary strain on everything. If you increase the bus speed, (which isn't a bad idea) make sure to keep the HT-link speed very close to 2000mhz. (slightly under is fine as it doesn't affect performance. Over 2GHz can have a severe affect on stability.)

If it helps, I run the following settings:
FSB - 242
CPU x15.5 = 3751 @ 1.456V
CPU NB x11 = 2662 @ 1.250V
HT-link x8 = 1936
Memory x6.66 = 1612 @ 1.65V

 

[iBeInspire]

In shooters where you want your graphics settings on low anyway(if you're serious about FPSes), the CPU upgrade will give you a bigger boost.

In anything else from single player (bioshock/skyrim) to racing (grid2/shift) the GPU will be the bigger boost

 

[DragonFire]

Never changed the northbridge frequency, its on default, will have a look in the bios and get back to you, sorry for late reply

Higher CPU/NB frequencies help performance considerably. If you will be sticking with the Phenom, try to get it to 2400mhz at least, preferably 2600; you may need to increase the CPU/NB voltage a bit as well, and don't confuse the CPU/NB with the NB. In my experience, though, very high CPU/NB frequencies (2800+) don't work well with fast RAM.